


A Confession

by translucentCrucible



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, Fluff, Happy Ending, Miscommunication, Quadrant Confusion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-24 23:33:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20022835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/translucentCrucible/pseuds/translucentCrucible
Summary: She wants you.She said she wants you.You don’t have a problem with that; you like her back. It’s just—(you drop a sugar cube into your tea. it’s a cool night, cool enough to comfortably drink a mug of piping hot tea while collecting your thoughts.)—she told you she wants to be your matesprit, and you're not sure you can do that for her.





	A Confession

She wants you.

She said she wants you.

You don’t have a problem with that; you like her back. It’s just—

(you drop a sugar cube into your tea. it’s a cool night, cool enough to comfortably drink a mug of piping hot tea while collecting your thoughts.)

—she told you she wants to be your matesprit, and you’re not sure you can do that for her. She’s great. No, she’s amazing, and in so many ways. You’ve known her for just over a sweep, and in that time, you became close friends. She’s attractive, too, and listens when you tell her about your visions, and she tells you when you do something stupid.

The problem isn’t her at all, actually. _You’re_ the problem. When you were younger and relationships weren’t a concern of yours, you didn’t know how to describe your romantic particularities, but you think you know how to describe your unique approach to attraction: You can’t fit your feelings into one quadrant. It goes beyond quadrant vacillation, as well. With Meulin, you want the lust that comes with matespritship and the softness of moirallegiance. If there was another party involved with her, you would be honored to be their auspistice. Blackrom is another, more complicated story, though, and you wouldn’t want to rush into anything like that with her.

You sigh and stare at the cityscape. The unnatural smell of nearby factories tickles your nose, not nearly as oppressive as the glowing advertisement boards, but still unpleasant. You were raised on the road. You’d be more at ease staying at a farmhive than a hotel. The lack of a sign on your plain adolescent clothing makes you a target. You won’t stay on the balcony for long.

You can’t agree to being her matesprit in good consciousness when you have so much baggage and so much you’d be hiding about yourself. You care too much about her to pretend you’re capable of quadranted romance. You need to tell her, for her sake and for yours.

The hardest part is finding the right words. You stare into your tea like it has the answers you need.

“She must know I’m pale for her, at the very least,” you murmur.

(the tea doesn’t tell you anything. your reflection isn’t likely to help you either.)

“How am I going to do this?” you ask yourself.

She’s waiting for you inside. You feel like a jerk for stepping out, but you did it so you wouldn’t stick your foot in your mouth. You take a few more moments outside to mull things over and take sweet, calming sips of tea.

You’ve been out here long enough, you decide. Any longer and she’ll start to worry you’re workshopping how you’ll let her down easy. In a sense, you are rejecting her. You take a last drink of tea, brace yourself, and open the balcony door.

The door leads to a hotel room. It’s small, but affordable for a few nights on the combined income of your mom and two adolescent trolls, all unconventional in their own way. Your mom is out at the moment, working an odd job until it’s time to move to someplace else. It’s been like this your whole life. Sometimes more trolls stay with your group, waiting until their can get out of the area on their own safely, but tonight only you and Meulin are in the hotel room.

Her.

Meulin.

She’s sitting on a pillow, reading, and trying to look like she isn’t nervous.

“Hey,” you start. “I’m sorry for walking out; it was just a lot to take in at that moment, and—”

“It’s okay!” she interrupts. Her voice is a little shaky, and now that she’s looking at you, you think that you see tears clinging to her lower eyelashes. She sets her book down and motions for you to sit across from her.

You sit on the red cushion across from her and set your empty mug by her book. You’re close enough for your knees to touch, and you can clearly see she’s on the brink of tears. Oh, Meulin. You take her hand in yours and run your thumbs over the bones of her knuckles and the soft spaces between them. She’s a few degrees cooler than you, but your hands feel cold. You’re dreading the next thing you say.

“I’m sorry, Meulin,” you say. Your voice shakes. “I can’t be your matesprit.”

She whimpers like she’s been kicked and hunches over, but you don’t let go of her hand, and she makes no move to separate your hands despite the way her shoulders shake with quiet sobs. You did this to her. You shift closer to her and press a kiss to her knuckles, your chest aching with guilt. She sniffles and rubs her nose on her sleeve.

“I don’t know how better to explain this,” you tell her. “I can’t be your matesprit because I’m—it’s complicated, but I do like you back. I want to be with you, but I can’t do quadrants, and I don’t want you to make yourself just... go with it. You’re my flushed crush, but I’m pale for you, too. I’m sorry. I don’t want you to be uncomfortable.”

Silence fills the space between you, punctuated only by your breathing. Meulin isn’t crying anymore and she breathes quietly through her mouth; her nose is so stuffy that breathing through it would sound like a failing woodchipper. Your body is full of adrenaline telling you to run and hide from being so vulnerable, but you don’t. If she wanted you gone, or if she wanted to leave, she could, but she hasn’t. Her hand is still held in yours.

“I’m sorry,” you repeat. You broke her heart and somehow you can’t come up with anything better to say.

“Kankri,—”

“I can’t make you do this.” You lean closer to her. “I can’t.”

“So you’re rejecting me,” she concludes.

You don’t have anything better to say so you apologize again and mentally kick yourself when her lip trembles.

“Kankri, none of that makes me want you any less,” she says.

Your eyes widen. “What?”

“I’m sorry I didn’t seem open to you,” she says softly. “I’m sorry you didn’t think you could talk about nonquadranted attraction. I doubt it’ll make you feel better, but I do notice you act pale with me. I doubt anyone else notices, but... I don’t mind. I like it.”

She pulls her hand from yours and you can’t help but sit there in shock, and you’re only processing her words when her hands move up your bare arms, sending tiny sparks from your nerves to your brain. One hand rests at the back of your head and the other gently pulls you to sit in her lap with a steady hold on your shoulder.

You wrap your arms lazily around her. She could kiss you, and you could kiss her, too. Your faces hover inches from each other. Maybe you want her to kiss you. Maybe you want that a lot.

“I want to make things work,” she says. “I want to be your matesprit, and your moirail, and whatever we decide feels right.”

You look away for just a moment and nod. “Me too. If you’re willing to take the risk.” 

“Travelling with you was a risk,” she points out. “Having faith in you was a risk I took, too. And I’ll take this one, too.”

You blush and try to hide the ridiculous grin on your face. She closes her eyes when you rub the back of her neck and thread your fingers through her hair.

“Kankri?”

You look up at her.

“May I kiss you?” she asks.

“Yes!” you gasp. “Yes. Please.”

She sniffles one last time and looks you over. She finishes gathering the information she needs, and—

(ow!)

—her lips squish against yours, pressing your teeth roughly against the inside of your mouth, and bumping your noses together. She pauses and pulls away a fraction of an inch, as unsure of how to proceed as you are. Her hand behind your ear presses lightly to nudge your head to a more comfortable angle. You concede, and let her position you how she wants. She breathes deeply through her stuffy nose and takes another moment before proceeding, her lips just millimeters from yours.

She’s cautious. You pull your bodies flush to each other and your eyes flutter shut as she kisses you. Her fangs nibble tentatively at your lower lip and you ignore the butterflies fluttering in your stomach to instead bring up a hand to pat her cheek, the action morphing into stroking the line of her cheekbones and the soft curves of her face. You feel her smile against your mouth.

You feel safe. Your skin buzzes where your bodies touch and you’re practically floating in soft, fluffy sweetness.

When she pulls back, when the kiss ends, olive dusts her cheeks and she smiles shyly. You relax against her collarbone and nuzzle her neck.

“I don’t want to put a label on us,” you warn. “Not yet, if that’s okay with you. If we’re a thing now.”

“We’re ‘a thing!’” she assures you. Then, she adds, “If you want to be, I mean.”

You stretch and press a light kiss to her jawline. “I do.”

“Like, everyone needs to establish boundaries in a relationship,” she says.

“You’re right,” you agree. “Even in quadranted relationships, the only way for it to be healthy is through communicating.”

Meulin runs her fingers through your hair. “I’m glad we talked it out. And then did some other stuff.”

“I’m sorry for making... so many assumptions.” You concentrate on the motions she makes around your hornbeds, drawing lines through your head. It feels nice, like the soft feeling you get when you curl up in a fluffy snuggleplane, and you lean into her touch.

“Oh, but being vulnerable is scary!” she says. “I can’t blame you for trying to protect yourself.”

“I still feel bad about it,” you say. “How I rejected you initially was unduly harsh, when I could have found a gentler, less suspenseful way to explain myself.”

“But you did explain yourself,” she points out. “And in all fairness, I put you on the spot before you went out, and that wasn’t right of me either.”

You trill and nuzzle her neck again. “We both made mistakes.”

“I really liked kissing you,” she says.

“It was really—” You search for the right word. “It was really grounding. I never expected kissing to feel so cathartic. Or so pleasant.”

Meulin kisses the crown of your head. “I have plenty more where that came from.”

She holds you, nestled against her, for awhile. The only sounds are the soft beat of your hearts and your nearly-synchronized breathing, punctuated by quiet purring. You concentrate on the sound of your fingers on the fabric of her shirt while you massage her shoulder blades.

Eventually you separate from each other, because otherwise you’ll fall asleep where you sit. You pick up your long-cooled mug of tea and take it over to the sink. It’s a shame, really, for tea to go to waste. You finish the cold tea. It tastes a thousand times better when it isn’t room temperature.

You wash out the mug with soap and water and dry it, and place it in the correct cupboard. You look back to Meulin, who moved from the pillows at some point to the loungeplank. She writes in her journal, smiling to herself. You watch the delicate way she grasps the page between her claws, so in her element while she writes or draws.

You don’t know what to call your relationship with her, but it doesn’t matter. Those are details you can work out at a later date.

(both of you are only eight sweeps old; there’s a lot ahead of you.)

You approach her and ask, “May I sit while you write?”

She nods enthusiastically. “Yes! And I want to show you the character analysis I wrote about the main blackrom interest in a book I finished recently. I would even argue they’re the real protagonist of the story, but come here—” She entagles your hand in hers and pulls you next to her. You scoot closer, and you rest your cheek on the edge of her shoulder for a better view of the page she flips to. “It’s easier to understand if you read it yourself. I even drew charts.”

You skim the page before taking the book to read it through thoroughly. “Oh, you even cited the pages! I’ll have to read the book later and compare thoughts with you.”

She smiles. “I thought you’d appreciate it,” she says.

The butterflies in your gut have returned tenfold. You snuggle up against her and cup her cheek and kiss her cheekbone. “I do.”

She watches you while you read her analysis and listens when you add your own hypotheses. You posit ideas to her and you discuss them together, and read a number of key passages from the source material, a thick paperback mystery novel about a novice legislacerator’s first sweeps in the justice system. The novel has anti-Empire themes, you point out, and you discuss it over the course of the next hour.

You fall asleep next to her on the loungeplank, and when you wake, you’re surprised by her arms looped around your body and her soft long hair tickling your cheek. You kiss her eyebrow and feel warmth spread in your chest at the soft trill she makes, and her claws curl into the fabric of your clothes, light enough to tickle.

**Author's Note:**

> i made a promise to myself to write and post one (1) fic before monday, so... here it is! i wrote it over the course of one week while having trouble sleeping, and i had a good time writing it. additionally, i hope whoever reads it likes it too :^)


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